


Malady

by hahaharley



Series: Bad Jokes [2]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: F/M, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:37:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hahaharley/pseuds/hahaharley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Joker is sick, so Harley does what any girl with a deathly ill, overachieving partner would do— she drugs him and handcuffs him to the bed until he gets better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost/archiving of a somewhat-Nolanized Harley Quinn ficlet I wrote last year. It's a partner piece to my Harley origin story, Bad Jokes, but assuming you're somewhat familiar with the basics of the Joker/Harley dynamic in traditional(ish) canon, you definitely don't need to read one to enjoy the other.

Halfway through February, Gotham City was treated to a freak faux-Spring. The clouds rolled away, the sun shone down, and the below-freezing weather lifted to a balmy fifty degrees. Such an anomaly was not entirely unprecedented in the city, but for someone like me, who had spent her last several winters bundled up tightly in thick coats and ugly scarves… well. I was excited.

The week drifted lazily along, and I was just getting ready to unpack the shorts and swimsuits when winter came back with a frigid, blustering vengeance. I sullenly retreated indoors, reminding myself that Spring wouldn't technically arrive for five weeks or so, that it would probably be chilly several weeks after that, and that I might as well readjust to the foul weather while it insisted on looming over me.

And while I was admitting problems to myself, I begrudgingly decided to address another one. Namely, the rattling cough in J's chest. It had started up at some point near the end of January, and had softened up slightly during the warm week, leading me to hope that perhaps it was on its way out. However, with the advent of more icy weather, it had returned, and it sounded twice as bad as it had before. He'd be talking me or the guys, and suddenly, he'd start hacking away; awful, fierce coughs tearing holes in his vocal cords.

As soon as I could do so privately, I took the matter up with him. I expressed the opinion that he was working too hard. He expressed the opinion that I should shut the hell up.

After bringing up the topic on several different occasions over the next day or two, and after being ignored or rudely rebuffed each time I recommended slowing down, I finally got fed up. By that point, his illness had reached a genuinely disturbing level, at least for me—he could hardly speak without nearly choking, and each night when he joined me for a couple hours of sleep, the burning heat of his skin woke me without fail. I decided it was time to take serious measures.

I dressed down, jeans and t-shirt, black-rimmed glasses with plain glass lenses by way of disguise—it was amazing how glasses made people think "sexy hipster librarian" rather than "the Joker's harlequin partner-in-crime." Not that a disguise (flimsy as it was) was strictly necessary. There were plenty of short, cute, hippy blondes darting around Gotham, and there was nothing in my face or form that would generate undue interest from anyone but the occasional psycho who spent all his time studying the pictures of me from Arkham that had been released on the news and the internet as soon as it became apparent that I had thrown my lot in with Gotham's favorite domestic terrorist.

Still, even though I was confident that I could handle myself if I _was_ recognized, I didn't want to make a production out of this. If J turned on the news that night and discovered that his li'l Harley had been involved in a deadly shootout at the neighborhood Walgreens, he might just get a touch suspicious, and we didn't want that.

Then again, I could always tell him that I was just buying tampons. J always gave me a vaguely disappointed look and changed the subject when the topic of my period came up. You could take the mind out of the man, I guess, but you couldn't take the man out of the mind. It always amused me to find habits in him that could also be ascribed to more typically "normal" men, probably because they were so rare. I don't think he was squicked out by it, necessarily (a man who dealt with guts and gore every day couldn't be, right?) but it was just one of those topics he dismissed as irrelevant (and maybe, _maybe_ just a smidge uncomfortable).

I was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, but work at Arkham had necessarily involved some interaction with meds for the patients. I didn't prescribe them, but I'd certainly administered them, and was familiar with the names of sedatives both weak and powerful. A forged prescription, then, was an easy matter, and I reproduced Dr. David Wilson's signature with an easy flourish as the final touch.

The sedatives were acquired with a minimum of effort, the middle-aged pharmacist merely glancing up at me disinterestedly before going to get the meds. I tossed the bag and the receipt away as soon as I was outside, pocketing the bottle. Phase One complete.

When I got home, J and the others were clustered in the main area putting together explosives, and I was privy to the customary quick checking glances before they ascertained that I was me and I wasn't a threat and returned to their work. I closed the door behind me and paused for a moment to observe them with a little smile.

But for the deadly fruit of their labors, they could be a little old lady's knitting circle, complete with the spattering of gossip. The Joker himself usually kept quiet during these little sessions, but we had a couple of loudmouths on our team now, and they loved picking on each other while they worked. There was a lot of good-natured bickering going on at all times. J didn't necessarily encourage the chatter and quarreling, but he tolerated it, probably sensing that it improved morale. In a job where the life expectancy was anywhere from a month to a year (I still don't know _where_ he found these guys), he must have known that it would benefit him to cut the guys some slack.

My affection died rapidly when the Joker broke suddenly into a coughing fit, tossing the devices from his lap as he doubled over in submission to the attack. It lasted a good minute, and when he finally straightened up, his eyes were streaming and I saw the spattering of blood on his hand before he wiped it away.

I frowned. The sooner I could enact my plan, the better. The last thing we needed was for his lung to collapse. We couldn't exactly traipse to the hospital and get him all fixed up. At most, we could kidnap a doctor, and I didn't like that option, either. There were still noble men in the city (albeit few) who would happily sacrifice their own lives if it meant getting rid of the Joker for good, and I wasn't exactly fond of the idea of allowing such men access to J's insides.

He cast me a wary look as I passed on the way to his room, probably made suspicious by my lack of response to the fit, and I made a mental note to step up the nagging so that he wouldn't (rightly) imagine that I was up to something.

We'd relocated recently, and I still wasn't sure what the building that made up our headquarters had been ten or twenty years ago—I'd say a jail, except jails weren't several stories high and they usually had bars instead of doors. I'd say an asylum, but asylums weren't typically wedged between other buildings in a ghost neighborhood of Gotham, where residents scarcely poked their heads out of their doors if they helped it. At any rate, there were no windows (ideal) and the iron bed frames were bolted to the floor (creepy). An out-of-business S&M club, perhaps?

The bolted beds had, in large part, influenced my plan, and I performed a quick search of the area around the base, getting rid of random paraphernalia—mostly clothes and newspapers, but I found some pins and little blades that could become problematic, and deep, deep under the bed, I discovered a cool, heavy hand grenade. When I pulled it out, I blinked at it for a minute before rolling my eyes and hiding it in a desk drawer.

_It's a miracle that we haven't all blown up,_ I thought, completing my search and rising to my feet. Now. Time for Phase Two.

I hesitated when deciding on the dosage. One was never enough for him; it must have been the length of his body combined with his fevered, frenzied, powerful self-control. Two—we were getting there, but I wouldn't at all put it past him to go lunging around, drugged and hazy, getting into trouble. He was weak already, though. Did I really want to risk giving him three?

In the end, I decided on the triple dose, choosing the lesser of two evils—I would rather him be comatose for a day than half-awake and angry at being deceived. I'd seen him take heavy doses of Thorazine without so much as blinking at Arkham; I wasn't particularly worried that he'd be killed. I ground up the powerful pills and wrapped the resulting powder in a piece of newspaper, pocketing it. I then returned to the main room.

J had finished or discarded his immediate task and was watching the others work. I could tell by the brooding nature of his stare that he was feeling moody. Likely he was disgruntled at the inhibitions his illness was posing, unhappy that he'd been robbed of his normal efficient alacrity, having to sacrifice time every few minutes to that nagging cough that completely incapacitated him.

_Aaaaaaaaand… annoying mode on_ , I thought, starting towards him. I didn't like being a pain in the ass when he was in such a state, but it was necessary to dispel suspicion and to accomplish the latter half of my plan.

I deposited myself in his lap without ceremony, wrapped my arms around his neck, and placed a kiss on the sharp line of his jaw. To my surprise, he tolerated the caress instead of impatiently shoving me off, as would be more like him in a bad mood. I leaned back and studied him, brow furrowed.

His eyes were heavy-lidded and his skin was practically burning, even hotter than usual. I estimated that the Joker ran at about a hundred degrees anyway instead of the average ninety-eight point six, so this was a bad sign.

"Any change?" I asked softly, searching his face. He glanced at me and drew in a long, labored breath. He clicked his tongue and lifted a boneless hand aimlessly in response.

"Ohhhhh, _yeah,_ " he hummed. "I feel like… dancing. You wanna _dance,_ Harls?"

I frowned. "Is there any way I can convince you to take it easy until the worst passes?" I asked, ignoring the question.

He closed his eyes, shook his head with a long exhale, and leaned back against the chair, the picture of exhaustion. I watched him, feeling the frown grow. I'd never seen him like this, too worn out to even put the usual bite into his retorts to questions he considered inane, or to even respond to them at all. I glanced around and spotted his coffee cup on the table in front of him, half-drained.

I took the opportunity. I brushed the side of the face with the backs of my knuckles, a move to which he only responded by twitching his nose in annoyance, and then got up and picked up the cup. "I'll go freshen this for you," I said as he opened his eyes. "Maybe a hot drink will help."

He waved a hand lazily, dismissively, and bent forward to pick up some materials from the table as I disappeared into the cramped adjoining kitchen. One thing I learned in the past months with J and his men was that coffee was almost always brewing. J was a veritable caffeine fiend, drinking the stuff more often than he drank water, and so I felt comfortable getting the sedatives to him in this way.

I cast a careful glance over my shoulder as I dumped the cold coffee down the drain. Hearing the chatter pick up again, I felt slightly safer, and I set the mug on the counter and pulled the little packet out of my pocket. The powder coated the bottom of the mug beautifully, and I chased it with a generous serving of coffee from the heated pot.

The Joker usually drank his coffee completely black, but I suspected that it was just because he was always in too much of a hurry to take the time to sweeten it, since he'd displayed a tendency of stealing my one-cream double-sugar cups whenever I didn't watch them closely enough. Keeping that in mind, I added sweetener and milk, stirred it up, and took a tentative sip.

Bitter, but not necessarily unduly. Hopefully, he wouldn't notice—coffee had a tendency towards bitterness anyway, and the sugar softened it up. I spat the mouthful out into the sink and took it out to him.

I didn't offer more touches or sympathy. If he was running a fever, as I suspected, then his skin would be fiery and sensitive and contact would be unwanted and necessarily painful. I just set the mug on the table and went over to an overstuffed armchair, taking a sheaf of newspapers with me. These I pretended to read in search for news of us, Batman, or copycats of either (the Joker despised copycats and took a personal interest in punishing them) while in reality keeping an eye on him.

I felt a quiet little triumph when he at first downed half the cup in one go, then continued with little sips here and there as he worked. He finally finished and cast the mug aside, redoubling his focus on the bomb. Then came the wait.

At least half an hour passed. I kept sneaking tentative glances over at him, and as time kept ticking past, I began to worry. _That dosage would have taken down a horse,_ I thought vehemently. _There's no way. No_ _ **way.**_

As the minutes marched on, I disconcertedly began to admit to myself that I might have misjudged J's stamina. _No fair,_ I whined internally. _He should be out by now._ I cast a disgruntled look at my newspaper. Maybe I could just spring on him when he decided to sleep. _If_ he ever went to sleep.

I heard him sniff and looked up instinctively. He was blinking one eye hard, the heel of his hand buried in the other eye, and as he brought the hand down, he joined gazes with me. I looked away sharply and then cursed myself. _Way to indicate guilt, Harley._ It was too late now; he knew I was up to something and that the "something" was probably related to his sudden sleepiness. The Joker was a genius, but even a man of average intelligence could have put two and two together. I could only hope that the drugs kicked in hard, and more importantly, _soon_.

I couldn't help looking at him again. He was now staring intently and scowlingly at me. Oh, he _knew._ I suspected that the only reason he hadn't yet come to physically confront me was because his drug-enhanced exhaustion was pinning him to the chair. He glared as he sluggishly removed the primed explosive from his lap.

"Harley," he said, and stopped.

I shifted the papers to the side and went to him. His head was already drooping to his chest, but as I kneeled by his chair, he summoned enough strength to get a hand around my throat, iron fingers pressing and bruising and speaking of the annoyance of the maltreated.

His strength was short-lived. The gesture seemed to sap the remnant of his energy, and his hand loosened and dropped uselessly as his eyes closed and his head lolled to the side.

I coughed and breathed deeply, taking the slightly bruised windpipe as par for the course, and then climbed to my feet. I searched the men's faces for a pair who would help me most willingly.

"Javier. Anton. I need your help."

The men looked at me warily, but rose from their chairs. "What are you doing, Harley?" Javier asked in that friendly, unassuming tone that he used so often with me and the Joker, a tone that made me think he would have made a great psychiatrist had he gotten the opportunity.

I gave him my most innocent smile. "The boss is sick and exhausted, and I don't exactly want to leave him to sleep in his chair—he needs a good rest. Help me move him to his bed."

The two men exchanged glances. They were aware that this was unusual _and_ dangerous—J had fallen asleep out in the main area before, and we'd always let him be, unwilling to go in and poke a sleeping tiger. At some point, he would wake up, and at some point, he would want to know who had moved him. What happened afterward would be anyone's guess.

However, he was sick. _Very_ sick, and the men weren't stupid—Javier, at least, would suspect the real reason behind his boss's sudden unconsciousness, would see that I was behind it, so moving him was less of a risk. Also, I had established myself as de facto leader when J was out of the picture. I was telling them to move him. When he was around, my commands would be completely disregarded if I ever felt the need to give them (I didn't), but to ignore them now would be… well, J was unconscious and I was not. I'd made a bloody display of dominance several times before. I'd do it again.

"I'm moving him either way," I said, sweetening the pot with a lift of the eyebrows. "If you help me, I'll tell him I dragged him alone. If you don't… you're both going down."

"Damn it, Harley," Javier grumbled, but he and a reluctant Anton bent to collect the Joker from the chair.

The drugs held. J was as still as a corpse in their grasp, and I led the way, clapping happily as the boys struggled and swore. "I'd help, but I'm worried I'd get in the way," I called back to them.

"Sure," Anton grumbled, seeing the insincerity—it was punishment for their initial unwillingness to obey.

I threw the door to J's room open and indicated the bed with an airy wave. "Heavy _bastard,_ " Javier swore as, with one last wrench, they deposited him on the bed.

"See?" I chirped when J failed to stir. "Out cold. He doesn't know a thing. Otherwise he'd be rearing up to kick your ass for calling him fat." I giggled at the thought.

"Better be," Javier said crankily. "If I get in trouble for this, I'm taking it out on _your_ pretty hide."

"Deal," I said, perching on the desk chair and grinning. _Beautiful._ "You guys can scoot. Let him sleep."

The two gave me disgruntled looks and left. I launched Phase Three.

I dug around in one of the desk drawers and re-emerged with a roll of duct tape. Going over to J, I peeled a long strip free and wrapped it around his left wrist. I wound tape midway up his forearm, doubled it, and then tossed the roll across the room.

I reached under his head, beneath the pillow for the handcuffs I'd stashed there earlier. I locked one end around the solid steel frame, and with a satisfying click, the remaining cuff closed around the Joker's protected wrist, just shy of being uncomfortably tight, and then he was imprisoned until I deemed him well enough to go free.


	2. Chapter 2

Once I had him locked up and had adjusted his position to make sure he wasn't twisted into some blood-draining uncomfortable contortion, I settled one knee on the edge of the bed, leaning over him. I reached out and pressed my fingers to the base of his neck. There was a strong, steady pulse, and I was comforted by that, at least.

I frowned and settled further into my knee, reaching over and brushing the matted hair spilling over his face to the side and laying the back of my hand on his forehead. His skin was burning, of course, no change there, and I exhaled, blowing a stray strand of hair out of my face. The brain started boiling at a hundred and seven. Hopefully, I'd caught him in time.

Dutifully, I searched him, hands roving over him to identify and empty the many, many pockets he had tailored into the custom clothes. I found numerous loose bills, three closed-blade knives, a much larger knife sheathed at his hip, a plastic Batman action figure in his back pocket (great, they were merchandising now), paper clips, fingernail clippers, and a flask. A quick sniff of the contents of this last revealed that it held whiskey (I guess he was self-medicating), and I removed it and the other items to the desk.

I moved around for a few minutes afterwards, preparing the room for the interment and gathering some things that I would need. This accomplished, I curled up in the desk chair for some sleep that I knew I'd need. Once he was awake, I was in for a hell of a fight, and I knew I'd need some rest to keep up.

It was this very thought (combined, of course, with the discomfort posed by the desk chair) that kept me awake a while. This was the first time I had openly and knowingly defied him since I'd joined him. I had gone behind his back, drugged him, and made him a captive. If I knew anything about the Joker, I knew that he deeply resented a loss of his freedom. He wasn't just going to roll onto his back and let this pass, and the thought put an uncomfortable twisting in my stomach that was likely fear, but also felt a hell of a lot like excitement.

_There's something_ _ **wrong**_ _with you,_ I told myself for the millionth time. I'd long ago stopped being bothered by this fact, but I didn't see the harm in reminding myself of it every so often.

_So what if he's pissed?_ I asked myself sternly. I couldn't live in a world where a paltry fever took the most electrifying man I'd ever known out of the game, and if he didn't stop and rest, that was exactly what would happen.

_And if he recovers and tosses you out for staging this little mutiny?_

I hesitated, feeling real horror strike me. This had become my life. Without him, without this place I'd carved out for myself, what was there? Pam, I guessed, but without him, what would be the point? The thought was almost enough to make me retrieve the key from where I'd hidden it in a matchbox in the desk and go free him from the cuffs then and there.

_Wait,_ I commanded myself before I could cave. _Yes, that would suck. Know what would suck more? If he died because you were too concerned about yourself to make him stop._ Yes, I was worried about what would happen to me after this was over, but I was more concerned about him now. I'd deal with the consequences when they came.

This determination proved to be the comfort I was seeking, and I drifted into an uneasy sleep soon after.

* * *

I woke to a loud thud several hours later. My eyes flew open, feet hit the ground, and I looked straight in the direction where I knew the noise had come from.

J was on the floor and fully conscious, though his eyes were bleary. He crouched next to the bedframe, sitting on his heels and rattling the cuff fruitlessly against the frame as he tried to twist out. I doubted that the sedatives had fully left his system, doubted that his mind was as sharp as usual and that he entirely grasped what was going on. Weighed by dread but fueled by anticipation, I rose from the chair. "J."

He stopped immediately. He drew a ragged breath and then slowly, _y_ turned his head. His eyes fell on me, his expression quickly jumped from understanding to rage, and his face split into a sickly, predatory grin that was not at all reflected by the cold burn in his eyes. " _Harley,_ " he purred.

I kept my voice light, non-confrontational. "Why don't you get back in bed?"

" _Sure_ ," he hissed. "But, uh, you see…" He shook his wrist, rattling the cuff. "I'm just a _little_ uncomfortable locked up here. Wanna toss me the key?"

I folded my lips together and shook my head. He released a long sigh and hung his head to his chest. He glanced up again a split second later, eyebrows lifted, bottom lip caught between his teeth as he feigned patience. "Hey. Look. I know you like playing these… uh, these little games. I understand. I do. But _Harley._ I've got work to do. _So_. _Un_ lock the cuffs… and let me go."

I crossed my arms and shook my head.

J slowly tilted his head to the side. "Ohhhhh," he sang darkly. "So _that's_ how it's gonna be."

"Yeah," I said steadily. "That's how it's gonna be."

" _Hmmmm,_ " he hummed, lifting his arm and rattling the cuffs once more demonstratively. "Oh, _look,_ " he said with the facsimile of excitement, rubbing his free fingers over the duct tape protecting his forearm. "You've… you've thought it all through." He broke off into a coughing fit, the speech irritating his throat. At length, he recovered, gave me a dirty look as if I were to blame for his illness, and continued. "Protecting the _arm…_ bed bolted to the ground…"

"You can blame yourself for that last one," I interrupted quickly. "It wouldn't have been possible if you hadn't picked this building for a hideout. What _is_ this place, anyway?"

He pursed his lips and hesitated for a second, the gears in his mind turning more slowly than usual due to the drugs and the bone-weariness, and then pointed a shaking finger at me. "Don't… now, don't change the subject. We're talking about _you_ locking _me_ up." He slammed hard into the 'p' and cocked a brow. He was playing it cool, but I could see the smolder in his blackened eyes, could see the fury hiding behind them. I cleared my throat nervously.

"Yeah. Yeah, we are. So let me explain the situation."

"Oh, _please._ "

"You're sick—really, really sick. You're running a fever, you're coughing up blood, and you're perfectly primed to collapse." I shrugged. "I figured it would just be easier to lock you up than to bust you out of Arkham after you collapse on a job and get caught again. That's where I'm coming from, just so you know."

He stared at me, expressionless. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and he settled from the crouch he'd been maintaining onto his haunches, stretching long legs in front of him and leaning back against the bed without any of his usual careless grace. He closed his eyes, tilted his head against the bedframe and softly said, "You're steppin' over a line here, sweetheart."

"I know," I said, feeling the pulse in my neck pick up as adrenaline heightened my heart rate.

"Oh-ho, oh, you _know,_ " he murmured quietly. "Well. Then why don't you GET ME THE _**FUCK**_ _OUT OF HERE?_ " The wrathful shout emerged suddenly, ripping dark and deep from his chest, and I winced and flinched back. J almost never shouted, and even now, I didn't delude myself into thinking he'd really lost his temper. He raised his voice to terrify, to cow people into submission, but also to sort of ruffle up his feathers and show how dangerous he could be.

This was a feather moment, and it was halfway working. I bit my lip until it bled before I could talk myself into opening my eyes. His stare was fixed on me and his chest was rising and falling, shoulders heaving with the effort of pumping air into his congested lungs. The outburst, brief as it was, had cost him, and the sound of his labored breathing strengthened my resolve. I shook my head.

"I can't do that."

He stared for a second, and then gave a shake of the head as though he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "Run that by me again," he said, turning his head and cupping his hand around his ear.

Now I was getting mad. I put my hands on my hips and shook my hair out of my face. _Would it kill him to just accept this without a fight?_ I thought, fixing him with an annoyed look. "You heard me. You are deathly ill. I'm keeping you here till the fever breaks. That's all there is to it."

His eyes widened—just for a split second, but it was there, a response to what he presumed to be a challenge. His lips parted, he smacked them thoughtfully and then looked up at me. "Wanna bet?"

* * *

An hour went by. I had beaten a silent retreat to my desk, where I took refuge, peeking over the top of my _Cosmo_ at him every couple of minutes. He'd spent a while coaxing, cajoling, threatening, and straight-up _ordering_ me to release him, but once it became apparent that I was completely unwilling to engage in further argument, he sat there and muttered to himself.

He did this at times when he was tired and discontent, would just talk out his thoughts. I'd been tuning him out, but when I heard the pronunciation of my abandoned title, I glanced back up and paid attention.

"Doctor's got claws, claws, claws," he was hissing. "Protector? _Babysitter._ Let me ask you, do I _look_ like I need a babysitter? Apparently. Apparently, I can't tell if I'm too sick to work anymore. Oh, oh, oh," he sang, sighing loudly. "This world, I tell ya. Goin' to the dogs when a girl can, uh, cuff a guy to a bed and not even _reward_ him for the inconvenience."

"Hey, if you want a reward, I'm down," I said, glancing up from my magazine.

His eyes lit up, fiendish inspiration prowling around inside of them. "Sure," he drawled. "Just come on over. Let's _play._ "

I grinned humorlessly as he struggled to fight off another coughing attack. "Not _that_ kind of reward. I'm not sure, but I think that sort of exertion right now might just tip you over into a coma, and no, I'm not willing to test that theory. Here." I got up, pulled a bottle from one of the many drawers, and walked around the desk, tossing it to him.

He caught it one-handed and examined it, then looked up at me, eyes hooded in mistrust. I couldn't really blame him, considering his recent unknowing encounter with the meds that were probably still in his system. "Pills."

"Ibuprofen," I elucidated. I'd all but emptied the bottle, leaving only one dose—I wouldn't put it past him to down the whole thing in a bid for liberation. I didn't intend to let that happen.

He sucked on the insides of his cheeks, then released them with a wet squelching sound. " _This_ is my reward?" He sounded woefully disappointed.

"Look at it this way," I said optimistically. "It's a fever reducer. If your fever goes away, you're free."

"Always lookin' out for me, aren'tchya, Harley?" he asked. It wasn't a compliment. Still, he twisted the cap off and shook the two pills into his mouth.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I hadn't thought he would actually _take_ them, and his docility with only a token complaint was encouraging. Lulled into a sense of security, I stepped forward as he waved the empty bottle impatiently at me, squatting and reaching forward to take it from him.

I saw the change in his face a split second before he wound back and spat the medicine directly in my face. I jerked back, falling on my bottom as he lost himself in a paroxysm of laughter that turned quickly into wet, hacking coughs, and I steadily wiped the saliva and pills from my face.

"Funny," I remarked caustically, feeling like an idiot. I should have known something was up. He wasn't going to make this easier for me than he had to, and the sooner I accepted that… "Look," I said, propping myself up on my heels, "you might not want to believe this, but you are _not_ three years old, and this sort of behavior is _not_ going a long way toward convincing me that you don't need a babysitter."

He simply chuckled weakly through his nose in response, having recovered somewhat. I got up and went into the adjoining bathroom to wash off my face and hands. When I returned, he was resting back against the bed again, heels together and toes pointed in opposite directions. I could read the lines of exhaustion in his face and so I wasn't surprised that he was taking it easy, but I'd had the opportunity to observe him in captivity before, and I saw the same expression on his restful face now as I had before.

He had a habit of appearing to surrender when he knew he was stuck, but I knew better. He was only waiting, waiting for an opportunity to get loose, and I would do well to be careful from this point onward.

I took my seat again carefully and picked up my magazine. I looked again, saw that he was sitting as far from the imprisoning headframe as he could, his long arm stretched out in the air, the cuff pressed against the heel of his loosely curled hand, and I felt another little pang of guilt. I hated myself for being the one to cage him.

"Can I get you anything?"

"If you… tossed me… the key… that'd be _super,_ " he drawled haltingly, head rolling on his neck from one side to the other and eyes flashing as he opened them for an instant.

"Sorry," I said, feeling smaller in the face of his weariness than in his wrath.

He drew a breath through his nose and chuckled, quietly and musingly. He opened his eyes again and focused them with an effort on me. I hoped he was getting close to sleep again. "No, you're not," he said simply. "You've talked yourself into thinking you're doing the right thing."

"Can you blame me?" I asked. It came out a bit defensive, and his eyes lit up in anticipation of the quarrel I had denied him earlier.

He was moving slower than usual, speaking slower and probably _thinking_ slower, and he took his time replying, but at length the rebuttal came. "Let me… ah… _clarify_ for you. Let's take a nice look at what's goin' on here up against what's gone on in the past. Now, see… our—uh, relationship…" He paused, eyes drifting back and forth as he reviewed the word, and with a decisive nod, he deemed it acceptable and continued. "It's basically a big ol' game of _follow the leader_." He put a hand to his chest as he spoke, indicating himself as the leader in question, and I didn't dispute the assessment, accurate as it was.

"So," he continued calmly, "what happens to that _relationship_ —" the word was spoken sibilantly through tightly grit teeth this time—"when the leader says _stop…_ and you _go_ instead?"

I felt a tremble in my knees and set my feet more firmly on the ground. This was going exactly where I _hadn't_ wanted it to go. He watched me, waiting for an answer, and I stammered over my response. "I… that's not… how it works."

"Oh?" A simple question, polite and genteel and completely loaded.

"Our _relationship_ is not based on some sort of predetermined _system,_ " I said, voice strengthening as I started to find my feet in the argument. "If I've followed you in the past, it's because I felt like you knew where we were going. And you still do, and I'm not trying to wrest the steering wheel away, but I _am_ pulling the emergency brake." J raised his eyebrows, possibly impressed at the transformation of the metaphor. I ignored the mocking expression and made to continue, but he cut me off.

"You're _trying_ to take my freedom away. You're going straight back to your indoctrination, Harls—the second you don't like somethin', you lock it up. It's a little _discouraging._ I thought we'd moved past that."

"That is absolutely not what this is about!"

"Really?" He pulled an expression of comic mock surprise.

"Yeah, really! It's not a power struggle! I'm not, I dunno, getting gratification from this or thinking of staging a _coup_ just because I managed to drug you and lock you to a bed. This is all about the fact that I'm worried about you, worried that you're going to whip this fever up into a wildfire that'll burn you down, and since you're not listening to reason, I decided to make my stance known in a way you'll understand."

"You don't worry about me going out every night, playing with fire and bullets," he was quick to point out.

"Of course I do!" I insisted fiercely. "And to make it worse, you take me with you less than half the time, so if you _do_ get shot, I'm going to hear about it hours later when the boys make it home."

"Oh, whine, whine, _whine_ ," he said acerbically, but I could see from the watchful look in his eyes that he wasn't particularly annoyed at my concern; it was more likely that he was channeling his irritation at his imprisonment in an effort to rile me. I took a deep breath.

"I can't do a damn thing about your job, and if I _could_ , I wouldn't, cause I'd be destroying part of what makes you _you._ "

He mockingly touched his chest where his heart was. I ignored the scorn and pressed on. "This isn't about that. This is actually an attempt to _help_ with what you do. Look at you, J, you can hardly stand."

"That's 'cause I'm cuffed to a bed," he rasped grouchily, but broke immediately into a coughing fit, proving my point.

"No. Uh-uh. What happens when you start coughing uncontrollably in the middle of a knife fight? Eyes shut, fingers go loose, and then you get stabbed. No. This is a problem I can fix, and I intend to." Still incapacitated by the attack, he hacked away into his fist and glared at me. I shrugged high and spread my arms. "Hey. Trust me, I don't like it any more than you do. Less, I should imagine, since I know as soon as you're free my life's going to be hell, because you're not gonna let this one go. Don't you think I know that? And I'm _sorry._ I just can't give you what you want this time."

He recovered finally. Drawing a few deep, shaky breaths, he steadied himself and then met my gaze. "No, Harley," he drawled as if he hadn't just coughed out half a lung. "No, you're not sorry. But you _will_ be."


	3. Chapter 3

I didn't know what to say after that. He wasn't exactly telling me anything I didn't know, and the bloom of fear in my stomach was far less sharp than it had been at first when I'd realized exactly what I was risking by doing this, so I just retreated silently to the desk, my fortress for the duration of this little battle.

Honestly, I'd hoped that he would just give up and go to sleep for a while, collect his energy. Certainly he could use it, and he was getting draggier and draggier, but see, the Joker had this habit of being tirelessly persistent when he wanted something—one of his best and worst qualities. At the moment, it was immensely irritating, because he was making no secret about the fact that he wanted the flask I'd _stolen_ from him (his words, as if I planned on keeping it) and that if I didn't give it back, he wouldn't sleep.

"Since _when_ do you need alcohol to sleep?" I'd demanded, glaring at him from over the top of the magazine.

"Don't you judge me," he'd replied. He was in a prizewinning mood now that we'd gotten our ugly little tiff in the open, and I suspected that this teasing demeanor was there to annoy me. Part of it also had to be his state of mind. His eyes were half-open at best, he was slumping and rolling around as if already drunk, and words were falling more freely from his mouth, which helped him manufacture the endless chain of "I want my flask, I want my flask, I want my flask."

I rolled my eyes. "No. I'm not going to let you stress out your _liver_ in addition to your _lungs_. Not to mention it'll dehydrate you, and fluids are kind of key here."

"Aw, are you telling me your mother never dosed ya with booze when _you_ had a cold?"

I looked at him, eyebrows tilted skeptically. He lifted his in response, reinforcing his question, and reluctantly, thinking _what am I getting myself into?,_ I shook my head. "Of course not." Hesitantly, I added, "Are you telling me yours did?"

I did this from time to time, made not-so-covert attempts to find out about the Joker's life before he'd surfaced in Gotham. It obviously wasn't information he considered important, and I trusted him in that, but human curiosity would have its way and try to get its nose in anyway. However, my attempts were usually heavy-handed and transparent—in part, I suspected, because I didn't truly want to know. Part of what worked in our favor was that I could never with any real certainty predict what he was about to do next. Predictability had become the root of evils for me, and so naturally I loved this trait of his, despite the fact that it often made life uncomfortable.

At any rate, he couldn't be tricked. Usually, he gave me a look that said _really, Harley?_ and refused to answer, but occasionally he'd launch into a story. The stories he told were often widely varied, conflicting, and probably complete bullshit. Still, I wouldn't put it past them to sneak the occasional truth in with the pack of lies, so I always paid attention and stashed the yarns away in case of further affirmation later on.

In this case, though, no such stories were forthcoming. He shook his head harshly, more in dismissal of the question than denial, and said, "Are you gonna give it to me, or do ya want me to explain how it works?"

I was pretty sure I was aware of the theory—I didn't live under a rock, after all; Pam had a habit of putting together hot toddies when one of us had a cold—but I shrugged anyway, wanting to hear his take on it. I was sure it would be memorable.

He sighed, but lifted his hands willingly enough, fingers spread and palms pointed towards me demonstratively. "Germs—" he pronounced the word with distaste and minor contempt, in the same way a student of Darwin might say the word 'Creationism'—"nest in the comfortable li'l… _caverns_ in the body. Hey, think about it—it's warm, dark, well-suited to sustaining life… no wonder the little bastards snuggle in 'n get comfortable. _So_. Best thing to do is make the immediate environment… uh, as _in_ hospitable as possible. To, y'know, _shoo_ the germs away." He curled and flicked his fingers, accompanying his speech with the appropriate gesture, then dropped his arms, the left halted by the cuffs, which he was now ignoring. "And _that_ is where the whiskey comes in."

I suppressed a laugh with difficulty. "And you're not worried that by effectually turning your body into poison via alcohol, you'll also kill off all your good cells?"

"Ya don't need good ones if you don't have any bad," he confided. "Besides. _Good_ cells come _back._ With, ah, luck, the _bad_ ones won't."

I pursed my lips. "I don't know."

He let out a soft huff. "Look, ya want me to get better?" he asked rapidly. "Coz _I_ know how _I_ work. Gimme the flask and this'll all be over a _lot_ quicker."

I sighed, tilted my head and stared reluctantly at the flask, then glanced back at him. Instinct said that flooding the body with alcohol was _not_ the answer, and I was predisposed to keep it away from him, but…

Well, he _did_ know his own body better than I did, even if he was forever determined to ignore its limitations, and I was encouraged by the fact that he seemed to be moving on to Plan B: get better as quickly as possible (Plan A being to bully his way out). And giving him what he wanted might shut him up, at least for a while. Don't get me wrong, I loved listening to J, but when he was annoyed with me and therefore in the mood to make my life hell, tuning him out was always the best option, and he was making that difficult.

I reached forward and picked the flask up from the desk. Making sure the lid was tightly screwed on, I threw it casually in his direction.

It bounced off the wall behind him and went spinning off to the side, landing on the floor a few feet from where he was sitting. He looked at me, looked at it, and then leaned over to reach for it. He made it within a few inches of his goal before the cuff caught him and his body jerked as it was halted, and he shot me a quick, frustrated look before rotating, bracing himself on his arm and trying to reach it with his foot. He might have had better luck barefooted, but his shoe nudged the container and actually pushed it a bit further away. He kept trying, but I could see his arm shaking as it supported him and felt a sharp pang of guilt.

I couldn't stop myself. I rose swiftly from the chair and went over, staying out of his range as I crouched to pick up the flask for him.

Yeah. It turns out that I'd underestimated his range, as was no doubt his intent. Maybe he'd been pinching the short chain of the cuff to cut off a few inches, maybe he'd twisted it somehow around the frame—hell, maybe it was that special brand of black magic that seemed to accompany him everywhere. I didn't know. All I knew was that one second, he was groping fruitlessly at the flask, but the second I bent over and touched the cool metal with my fingertips, his fingers clasped around my wrist, and I had just half a moment to glance up and realize what was happening before he pulled me off my feet with a powerful jerk.

I collided hard with him and came out of it struggling. I got my hands between us, bracing them against his chest, but he had no interest in holding me close—I felt his fingers like steel cupping my face, and then _force_ and my vision exploded into white stars as my head collided with something.

I reared back, blinking hard, and sluggish realization caught up with me—he'd bashed my head against the iron frame of the bed beside him. I didn't have time to process this and react accordingly before he gripped me and did it again, _hard,_ and this time I felt the pain rather than the numbing shock that had immediately followed the first blow.

He withdrew his hands from my face then. Without him holding me up, I slumped over onto him, realized that this was probably a bad place to be, pushed against him to try to get up and away, and overshot, falling onto my back. The dizziness crashed into me and the pain blacked out the edges of my vision, and I tried to move, but other than some weak hand twitches, I couldn't force myself to stir.

His face appeared over mine. It hovered for a moment, head tilted curiously, then vanished as he ascertained that I wasn't going anywhere. I groaned and tried vainly to turn over on my side. His hand pressed sharply, reprovingly into my shoulder, and then began roving. My brain took a second to catch up, but eventually told me he was looking for a key— _the old familiar places_ , pockets and bra, checking everywhere.

My mouth opened. A sluggish, pained chuckle got loose— _ah, you won't find it here._ Of course not. I wasn't packing anything he could use to pick the locks, either. No, the only thing he'd gain from this would be the gratification of punishing me—which, admittedly, I deserved, though not for the same reason as he thought. _How many times are you going to fall for the same old tricks?_ I asked myself, blinking hard in an attempt to make the black recede from my vision.

He reached underneath me roughly, fingers delving into my back pockets and failing to find anything. I heard a strangled growl of frustration, then he shoved my limp form a few inches and fell back.

My strength was returning. I managed to flip over onto my stomach, then got my hands under me, rose up on my knees, and crawled painfully away until I reached the edge of the room. Laboriously, I turned again and propped my back against the wall, and checked to confirm that I was indeed out of reach before taking inventory of the fresh injuries.

The left side of my face where I'd collided was on fire, and a quick touch to my brow bone yielded extremely tender, already swollen skin, split open and bleeding in several places. I flinched away, unwilling to irritate it further—certainly I'd get at least the edge of a powerfully black eye as a consequence. My lips felt unusually large as well, and a quick check revealed one or two burning, bleeding splits on the left side. "Ugh, damn it, J," I snarled thickly—the dizziness was increasing now that I was sitting upright, and I, recognizing the telltale signs of a potential minor concussion (what was this? Number three? Four?) held as still as possible, blinking away the watering in my eyes.

"You are _not_ going a long way towards helping your cause here," I growled, rolling my eyes around to rest on him.

As quickly as he'd summoned the strength necessary to overpower me, it left him, and he slumped against the bed, chest rising and falling rapidly as he struggled for breath. I could hear the air rattling in his lungs and his eyes were shut tightly against the pain.

I wanted to go to him, but my aching head was plenty of evidence of what happened when I got within his range. Besides, he wasn't the sort to appreciate coddling, and there wasn't much I could do for him anyway. Trick him into swallowing expectorant? Unlikely.

Still, I winced, watching as the fight for breath resulted in an overtaxed and irritated throat and he began to cough again, doubling the difficulty he was currently finding in breathing. I couldn't find any pleasure in this, despite my own injuries suffered mere moments ago at his hand.

Stretching out my foot, I found the flask with my toes and kicked it over to him. It skidded easily across the floor, hitting his leg and halting, and he scooped it up immediately, ripping off the lid and taking a deep draught.

It helped. His coughing subsided (I'd always thought straight alcohol was supposed to _make_ you cough, but this man always _had_ defied standard rules) and air started coming easier to him.

I watched him, ascertaining that he wasn't about to suffocate on his own phlegm right here in this room, and as soon as I felt reasonably confident that he was safe, I stood, using the wall for balance. I looked down at his hunched shoulders and coldly said, "Don't do that again."

He didn't reply, nursing the flask and not bothering to look at me. Using the wall to maintain my shaky balance, I slowly made my way into the bathroom.

I washed my face down with cold water, which helped the nausea recede a little but restarted the bleeding. I wadded up a cloth and dabbed it as gently as possible against the side of my head, lifting it periodically to examine the damage.

It looked pretty gross. The expansive bruise was puffy and pink with blue at the edges, red lining the parts of my head that had actually split open from the collision. The lips weren't so bad, they were just going to be a bitch to heal—no, it was the black eye that was gonna make me look like a domestic case.

I leaned forward and looked carefully into the reflection of my eyes, first one, then the other, then back, then forth. No… no mismatched pupil dilation. The nausea was disappearing quickly, too. I judged that this was either an extremely mild concussion or no concussion at all. _Well, that's lucky for a change,_ I thought crankily, pulling back and probing wincingly again at the bruise. I considered going out to get some ice in an attempt to reduce the damage as much as possible, but quickly decided against it. That would leave the room open to anyone who might want to thwart my plans, and I was in this already—I wasn't just going to let it go _now._

I shut off the light and took the wet wash cloth with me back out into the bedroom.

The Joker, it appeared, had finally succumbed to his weariness, but of course he'd had to do it in his own stubborn way—rather than climbing comfortably back on the bed, he was stretched out on the floor beside it, his right arm flung over his eyes, the left suspended perpendicular to the rest of his body as the handcuffs dictated, fingers curled loosely and knuckles arching towards the ceiling.

"Hey," I said in annoyance, pain making me cranky. "Get on the bed! You're gonna give yourself circulatory issues!"

He didn't respond. I saw the steady motion of his chest, up and down as he breathed, noted the slackness of his muscles, and decided to cut my losses. He was finally sleeping, which was more than I had hoped for—I'd be happier if he was comfortably resting on the bed, but I'd be damned if I was going to go over their and haul his heavy ass up on it, especially after what happened moments ago.

* * *

The silence must have worried the guys, because after about an hour, there was a knock on the door. I was ignoring my headache and had my feet up on the desk, was crouched over and painting my toenails purple, and I didn't feel particularly compelled to answer unless they got rowdy.

After a moment, footsteps receded down the hallway, and a quick glance at the Joker revealed that he hadn't so much as moved, completely knocked out. Approvingly, I nodded and then returned to the business at hand.

After another few minutes, though, I heard some telltale scratching at the door—almost inaudible, but in the relative silence of the room, I caught it and identified from what it was. Carefully, I pulled open one of the desk drawers and quietly removed my very own revolver, setting it on the desk.

When the door swung silently open, the lock neatly picked I wasn't particularly surprised at what I saw.

Ace was standing there. He was a relatively new henchman, had only been working for us for a month or two, but I'd already found him to be a remarkably inconvenient person. He worshipped the dirty floorboards upon which J paced— _worshipped_ them, and that adoration proved problematic for me. While most of the men readily accepted my relationship with the Joker and tolerated my presence, even appreciating me in some cases, Ace regarded me with the sort of surly dislike with which an ex-girlfriend might treat a current one. He ignored me as much as possible, especially after J put his head through a window after getting fed up by his thousandth passive-aggressive complaint about me (I wasn't around, but that's how Javier told the story).

Now he had a nasty healing wound stretched across his forehead _and_ a grudge. I couldn't imagine that his purpose for being here was a good one.

His eyes fell on J, and, apparently not seeing me right away, he took a step or two into the room. I clicked my tongue loudly, halting him, and he turned and gave me a mulish look.

"Hey, Harley," he said cautiously, not bothering to conceal the undertones of contempt in his voice. "Whatchya doing?"

"Painting my toenails, Ace," I said, responding to his tone with a saccharine version of the same. "What are _you_ doing? Last I heard, this wasn't quite… _your_ space."

He bristled slightly and took another cautious glance at the Joker. "Why is he locked to the bed?" he asked.

"We like to play," I said simply and shamelessly, and arched my eyebrows at him. "Something I can do for you?"

"You can let him go. We need him," he said, turning again.

"Ah, ah, _ah,_ " I said sharply, one hand straying to the gun on the desk. "The boss is _sleeping._ In case you didn't notice, he's been dealing with the flu or something. If he's resting, you _don't_ disturb him. Understand?"

He reluctantly tore his eyes away from the sleeping figure, looking mutinously at me. "Nice shiner."

"Thanks, I'm kind of proud of it myself."

"We heard a commotion in here earlier."

I mock-gasped and then tsked at him. "Ace. Listening in now? You're one really baby step away from voyeurism, sweetie. Might want to keep a handle on that."

He glared. "Yeah, right. I don't think the Joker _wants_ to be cuffed to that bed, Harley. I think he'd _really_ appreciate it if I let him go, so if you don't mind, I'm just gonna…"

He moved towards the bed, halfway there now. I decided it was time for drastic measures. I brought the gun up, rested the butt on the desk, and thumbed the hammer back with an audible and instantly recognizable click. He froze and turned slowly back to me. I put on a patient smile.

"Actually, Ace, I _do_ mind. You see, he's _sleeping,_ and right now, he happens to _need_ it. Now, you've got a choice to make. If you think he _is_ locked to that bed against his will, then it'd probably be _very_ advisable for you to free him. He's not likely to be thrilled that none of his beloved _henchmen_ —" I emphasized the word, driving the kid's role home—"intervened in his captivity.

"However," I continued, rocking the gun from side to side, "if he's _not,_ if he really is just taking a much-needed catnap, then I don't think that same intervention would be _half_ as welcome. This is _his_ room, Ace. You ever been in here before?"

His hesitance was the only answer I needed. Generally speaking, I was the only one allowed in the bedroom, and even _I_ didn't share it full-time—I'd been tossed out onto my butt every now and again when the Joker was completely absorbed in his work, and had come to regard it as a matter of course. This was his sanctum, a tiny physical representation of his considerable mind, and the Joker was a very private person.

I grinned at him. "Even if he _is_ stuck, I don't see him reacting very well to your presence here. Now, aside from _that_ little dilemma, you need to consider the fact that I have a _very_ loaded Colt .45 trained _directly_ on your face." He took an edging step back towards the door at the reminder, and I sighed regretfully and shook my head. "If you keep moving towards him, I'm going to have to empty the gun on you. Now, I'm not known for spectacular marksmanship, but at this range…"

I sucked in a breath through my teeth, squinting demonstratively at him. "So," I continued deliberately, lifting my free hand to my face and resting my chin on the heel, keeping the gun trained on him, "I guess… you've got to ask yourself one question."

He actually quit breathing, and his eyes narrowed at me, as if he knew what was coming but couldn't quite believe it. I smiled. "'Do I feel lucky?'" I intoned softly. He blinked, and I lifted the gun, closing one eye and pursing my lips. "Well? Do ya? _Punk_?"

Nothing. Absolutely flint-faced as he edged closer to the door. I brought the gun down again, scowling disappointedly at him. "Oh, come _on,_ not even a _smile?_ "

"Crazy _bitch,_ " he snarled the second he was close enough to the door to risk it, and bolted out as I rose from my chair.

"That was comedy _gold!_ " I yelled after him. "You'd think the _Joker's_ henchmen would have more of a _sense of humor!_ "

No response. I rolled my eyes and went over the door, kicking it shut and locking it again. I turned and looked grumpily at the sleeping Joker. " _You'd_ have laughed," I said moodily, and returned to the chair to finish my nails.


	4. Chapter 4

We were left in relative peace after that—Ace was the only one immediately dumb enough to barge into the room and interfere, and he doubtless would have told the other guys that I'd lost it. I managed to catch a quick nap in my chair, resting for an hour or two before I woke up with the sense that all was _not_ right.

I looked immediately to the floor where J rested. He had rolled over halfway under the bed, his imprisoned arm twisted over his chest and pointing up at a strange angle, the other trapped beneath him. His back was to me now, and I could hear him shivering from all the way from my place across the room. Hesitantly, I rose to my feet and took a few steps towards him, then paused.

_It's probably another trick._

It could be. Then again, this time he knew that I wasn't carrying the key on me, and he'd already beaten my face up pretty badly. What was he going to do this time, catch me and beat on me until I agreed to go get the key? He'd see the folly of that plan; as soon as he let me go to retrieve the key for him, I'd be safely out of his range.

I'd done a pretty shitty job of taking care of him thus far due to the fact that I was scared to go too close to him. These symptoms, though, were consistent with what I expected of the midpoint of a bad illness, the hardest part, and he was going to need some help if he was going to get through it quickly.

 _To hell with it,_ I thought. _I'll go see if he's faking. If he's just looking for another fight, it's not like I'm in pristine condition—what are a few more bruises in addition to the ones I already have?_

I'd talked myself into it, and it didn't take long for me to reach him and stoop down to him. I touched his shoulder to no reaction, and it took some effort to pull him over—he definitely was committed to the huddle he was in.

I rolled him onto his back, and immediately, he began wheezing. His eyelids rolled open, then drooped shut again, flew back open long enough for me to see his hazy and unseeing eyes, then closed.

"Damn it," I growled. I dragged his torso up, leaning it against the bedframe again, and once he'd been pulled upright, he started breathing a little easier. I leaped to my feet and darted into the bathroom. He needed fluids. I grabbed one of the numerous discarded coffee mugs sitting around on the counter, rinsed it rapidly, and filled it up with water before returning to his side, crouching beside him and smoothing his bedraggled hair out of his face and pressing the rim to his mouth.

Really, I think he was still unconscious at first, yielding to the cup and parting his lips in some subconscious need for hydration, but the act of drinking must have awoken him. His eyelids twitched, slowly swept open, and I saw the recognition in them but was a little too committed to trying to tend him to stress out about it. _Let him hit me,_ I thought savagely, determined to get as much water in him as possible before he reacted.

By that point, he'd had half the cup, and so I was resigned when his hand groped at my wrist and then batted the mug out of my hand with a powerful swat, sending it careening across the room until it shattered against the wall. I launched myself backwards, aware that my presence was _definitely_ no longer required, but with an impressive display of reflexes, his free hand darted out and caught my ankle, and with a powerful pull, he hauled me towards him.

"J, _don't_ ," I protested, even as I resigned myself to whatever fate he had in store for me. I was off-balance and there was nothing to grab on to, and he was having another bout of that twisted, potent strength amidst his illness. He had me within seconds.

I was fully prepared to put up a fight, and I lurched up, fist colliding ineffectually with his jaw and knocking his head back with an audible snap. He was undeterred and had me pinned to his chest in another split second.

I was struggling to free myself when I belatedly realized that, aside from holding me tightly to him, he was making no effort to fight me. Slowly, my thrashing died away, and as he shifted beneath me, I stopped moving entirely, my curiosity calling to find out what was going _on_.

With a grunt of effort, he pulled me fully into his lap and drew up his knees so that I was effectively locked in. His elbow was crooked around my waist and his forearm rose up along the line of my torso, hand splayed along my uninjured cheek and pressing my head hard into his thin, painfully heaving chest. His shoulders were bent, hunched over me, and, trying not to provoke him by jerking my head around, I rolled my eyes up to look at his face.

His eyes were open but glazed over, and beads of sweat were forming rapidly on his forehead. His mouth was shut, and he was breathing rapidly and laboriously in and out through his nose, his gaze darting from one corner of the room to the other hastily as he rocked slightly back and forth over me.

 _He's hallucinating,_ I realized, and a hideous knot of cold fear settled firmly in my guts. This was bad. Little chest colds, mild fevers didn't result in _this_.

He kept cradling me as a child would a cherished doll—another second and his fingers came down over my eyes, trying to keep me from catching a glimpse of what he thought he saw. Whatever he was seeing, he was blocking me from it, and this in itself worried me immensely. The Joker was anything but the protective type, generally taking the lenient view that whatever didn't kill me made me stronger, and hey, if it _did_ kill me, I probably deserved it for getting myself into that mess to begin with.

This illness had him acting out of character, displaying traits that, were he in his right mind, he would cheerfully die rather than adopt permanently. If he were in his right mind—well, what _served_ for his right mind—then he'd be up and fighting, not crouching in the corner and hanging on to _me_.

I shifted a bit in his tight grip, moving my head an inch or two until it was nestled more over the left side of his chest, and I listened. His heart was thudding a mile a minute in my ear, loud and fast, and I knew I needed to do something _quickly._

First things first. He was expending too much energy hanging onto me like he was, energy needed to fight this thing off, and goodness knows his heart didn't need the extra strain. I worked my arm up and laid my hand alongside his neck, feeling his pulse thudding away against the heel of my palm.

"Shhh," I murmured softly. I had no idea if I could calm him down at all, but I could at least try. "Shh… shh, it's okay. J, it's all right. Calm down. Settle down, you're all right. You're just… you're just seeing things. We're okay."

No discernable change. I stroked the side of his neck gently, my cold hand sapping some of the heat from his skin temporarily as I kept shushing him and nestled closer to him, hoping that my proximity would stir some memories, bring him back to what usually functioned as his normal self.

After another moment or two of this, either my voice penetrated the thick haze coating his mind or he ran out of the energy necessary to keep it up. Either way, his grip loosened, and when I looked up I found him staring down at me, looking vaguely bewildered. I took the opportunity to wriggle free, and he made no attempt to catch me and bring me back. Once I'd managed to fully liberate myself, his eyes shut, his head dropped and he sagged over, completely drained.

I struggled to my feet and ran for the bathroom. I needed to get rid of that fever before it started addling his brain. Sure, he probably had some mental damage already, but the mind was delicate—too much more stress and it could break completely. The thought of J as a vegetable was suddenly very real and _very_ scary.

I found another cloth, soaked it in the coldest water the tap would yield, and ran back to his side. Stooping next to him, I applied the cloth to his forehead, cleaning off the sweat and smudging the paint in the process. I pressed my palm to the cloth, flattening it to his head, and he remained lax and unresisting.

"J," I said, trying hard to keep the panic out of my voice. "J, talk to me, will you? Do you know where you are?"

He opened his eyes with difficulty. That frightening bleariness was still there, and he stared at me for a moment—seeing but unseeing all at once. The brief recognition of earlier was gone, and it scared me, knowing that he didn't know who I was and _still_ wasn't fighting off my ministrations. He licked his lips once, twice, then smacked them painfully.

I fled back to the bathroom, where I soaked the compress again and filled another cup with water. I stopped at the desk, grabbed some ibuprofen from the discarded pile, and went back to him. "Take these," I said, pressing the pills into his cuffed hand and putting the cup into his other. "Drink this."

For a second, I thought I was going to have to force-feed him. After a moment, though, he chuckled throatily. "Suuuuuure," he drawled languidly, head lolling to the side. "After all… it's not like _you'd_ try ta… _poison_ me, wouldjya?"

"What? _No_ ," I said, frowning and pressing the compress to his head again.

"No," he repeated, blurry eyes rolling around in his skull. " _No._ Just… _drug_ me and send me _back_ to that _boring_ little place."

My frown deepened. "What are you talking about?" It was fairly obvious at this point that although he was finally talking to me, he wasn't talking to _me._ The question remained, then: who _was_ he talking to? _Who does he think I am?_

His fist tightened over the medicine, and for a moment I thought he was going to fling it as far from him as he could. After a split second of clutching it, though, he flattened his palm against his mouth, then chased the medicine with the entire mug of water, which he then dropped carelessly on the ground.

Relief flooded me. We still were far from through, but that was progress— _figures,_ I thought bitterly, dabbing at his face with the cool rag. _He's out of his mind with fever before he'll take basic, over-the-counter medicine for it. And fifty bucks says he doesn't even realize what it's for._

More paint was coming away. He tolerated my care for a second longer before reaching out and putting a flat palm against my shoulder, shoving me hard away from him. I landed back on my butt but didn't attempt to get up and try again. Instead, I pulled my ankles in, sitting Indian-style and leaning slightly towards him, searching his face for some clue that would help me understand the latest ramblings.

He leaned back against the headboard and adopted an expression of casual, cool resignation, twiddling his thumbs awkwardly as a result of the cuff. He licked his lips again and looked calmly at me. "So, when does this stuff kick in? If I'm gonna be takin' a trip to _Arkham_ … well, you understand if I want this to go as quick as possible," he said, screwing up his eyes in mock earnestness. "Gotta plan a breakout and all."

I felt my eyebrows climbing. _Oh. So that's it._ "Hey. Who am I?" No harm in double-checking.

He laughed, a surprised, delighted keening, its usual strength weakened by his bout with the sickness. " _Wow_ ," he chuckled, drawing out the opening 'w.' "Hey, uh—I'm—I'm _flattered_ that you're coming to me with this little… _existential crisis,_ Bats, I really am… but I gotta be honest with you; I'm not the best person to _ask_ in this case."

 _Oh, shit, he actually thinks I'm Batman,_ I thought, and edged backwards from him a bit, suddenly wanting to be well out of range. This situation had just gotten a little more dangerous.

Okay, a _lot_ more dangerous.

Plus, this was a pretty huge hallucination. He wasn't just seeing threatening shadows at the edge of his vision; this was a full-onbreak from reality _._ He'd convinced himself that Batman had shown up to drug him and incarcerate him again. Not good.

"J? Come back home, okay? It's me," I said softly, trying to gently draw him back in, back to here and now. "It's Harley."

"Harley?" he said, tilting his head and squinting at me. "What do… why do you wanna talk about _her?_ "

"No, I—"

And inspiration belatedly struck. That beast of curiosity arose again with a roar, this time demanding its way. _Be careful what you wish for,_ I reminded myself ferociously, but it was too late for that. I'd been handed an opportunity on a silver platter, and I was neither strong nor weak enough to resist it.

Carefully, I rearranged my thoughts and assumed the persona he'd assigned to me—admittedly with some difficulty, I was a far cry from the demented six-foot rodent that plagued the Joker so elegantly. "You two… seem pretty close these days. Should I worry about her?"

"Should you _worry_ about her?" J sucked on his teeth placidly, eyes twitching left and right as his mind churned. "Ya know," he said suddenly after a moment, "if you'd asked me that a few months ago, I'd… hoo, I'd have said _no._ Not a threat, push her to the side, go about your business." He lifted a hand, shaking it dismissively. " _But…_ hmm." He turned the hand around, examined the slightly overgrown nails hazily as I waited, my breath suspended in my throat. "She gets meaner every day."

"To you?"

"Mm," he said noncommittally. "Public, usually. She, ah—she…" He licked his lips pensively, tapped his fingertips as if counting, and then his face split into a grin. "So we were out shopping a couple'a weeks ago. Nothing fancy—get in, grab some basic supplies, then get out." He snapped his fingers emphatically. "Simple. But, uh, you see… there was this _girl_ there. And, ah… she was just _blatant._ I'm sure you've noticed—you being the big, ah, gloomy _testosterone_ factory that you are—Harley's rigged herself a little getup. Not as _dramatic_ as yours, sure, not as swanky as mine. More _cute_ than anythin' else. Cut her some slack, though, wouldjya, she's new to the game. She's getting there.

"So anyway," he continued, tilting his weary head back to rest flat on the mattress, wincing and shifting to accommodate the new position, "she's, ah… this girl's got on a copy of Harley's outfit. Pale imitation, really," he said, wrinkling his nose in scorn. "You know the diamonds I gave her?"

I smiled to myself, realizing for the first time how drastically different the meaning of that question would be coming from any other man in Gotham. "The scars, yes."

"Yeah. This _girl_ had 'em painted on. _Talk_ about lack of commitment. So there she was, bold as brass—well. Less so when we showed up. I _really_ doubt she thought she was gonna come face to face with the real _Harley Quinn._ So Harley sees her, and… she just goes _ballistic._ Jumps on the girl, starts _whaling_ on her, _just_ merciless. None of us takes too kindly to _copycats,_ you know, but we all have different ways of dealing with 'em. Me, I like to _play_ with my food. _You_ prefer to wait around till _I_ deal with your imitators, obviously. And _Harley._ Harley seems to prefer the down n' dirty approach. You shoulda heard some of the things she was saying to this kid—I didn't _know_ she was so creative with her language; it was enough to make _me_ raise an eyebrow.

"She cut up the girl's face before I pulled her off—nasty knife, too, had an edge to it. Spat on her, told her to think twice before messin' with scary people. And in that moment—" His eyes rolled into the back of his head as if he were lost in the bliss of the memory—"Oh, she _was_ scary. I was _so proud._ "

I ducked my head, reminding myself that I was supposed to be Batman and that grinning like a fool wasn't likely to keep him talking. _On the bright side, it might snap him out of it. That would be a nice return to normalcy._ This new, unreserved flow of information was intoxicating, though—it was almost enough to expel my worry about its source. To think he would brag about me to Batman—it was almost unbelievable, except here it was, playing out in front of me.

I chose my next question carefully and with a quickening heart. "So then… do you think you'll stick with her?"

He lifted his head slowly from the mattress, and from the sharpening look in his eye, I feared I'd asked the wrong question, that he'd snapped back into reality and was suddenly privy to the knowledge of my nosiness. He narrowed his eyes, though, the way he would look at someone who he suspected of knowing more than what was said. "Ah, but that… isn' _t_ the question… is it?"

I raised my eyebrows in bewilderment. If that wasn't the question, then I sure as hell didn't know what is.

"The _question,_ " he continued clearly, rolling his head back on his neck again, back to the mattress as he addressed the ceiling, "is whether I think _she'll_ stick with _me._ "

"Oh," I said intelligently. It seemed the only real response.

"Yeah. Oh," he said moodily, licking his lips.

"What, do you think she _won't_?"

He lifted one shoulder noncommittally. " _You've_ seen her. She's _enthralled._ She… ohhh, she's having a _good_ time these days. Doesn't mind getting… battered and _bruised,_ cause you know, she's _free._ Free from _Daddy,_ free from those terrific upstanding folks at the Asylum… but ya know, sooner or later, she's gonna realize at least _one_ of two things."

I had stopped breathing. Fear was boiling up now, different from the cold fright that I'd felt just moments ago. I forced myself to speak. "What?"

He extended two fingers from his left hand, not bothering to lift his head. "One," he said, ticking the index finger. "That she _isn't_ free. Not really. She's just traded one kind of servitude for another. She's as chained to me as she was chained to her _father_ —" the word was dropped with scorn—"or to her _job._ She made a conscious _decision_ to commit herself to _this_ enslavement, suuuuure, but, you know, dependence is dependence."

 _Hmm. That's not so bad,_ I thought. _I know that I'm locked to him pretty tightly, but I'm cool with that. I'm serving someone or something one way or another, might as well be someone I love._

"What's the other thing?" I asked, feeling slightly calmer now.

" _Two,_ " he hissed, ticking the second finger. "One of these days, somethin' will happen. I kill a bus of _orphans,_ or we get in a li'l tussle and her armbreaks, or… her favorite _henchman_ gets heavy-handed with the C4 and gets _blown up._ Somethin' like that. _Then…_ "

He trailed off. He was silent for a decent span and his eyes drifted shut; I was afraid he'd gone to sleep after twenty seconds or so passed, and demanded " _What?_ " He _had_ to finish the thought. I wanted to know what he thought about me, about my dedication to him and to this cause.

He picked up the sentence as if he'd never left it. " _Then,_ little Harleen will re-emerge. The _good_ girl she was—and still _is,_ way deep down. That _good_ girl, the _doctor,_ the _sane_ one, will snap. She won't be able to logic it away anymore. She'll get scared. She'll _run._ "

My chest was rising and falling rapidly, reflecting my sudden wrath at this declaration. _How could he think that?_ _ **How**_ _?_ I forced myself to exhale through my nose, to keep it cool, play like nothing was wrong.

He opened his eyes, and very simply, he told the ceiling, "And on that _day_ , that _second_ she runs scared… I'll kill her."


	5. Chapter 5

I blinked. _**Kill**_ _me? Seems a bit extreme._

"Why kill her?" I asked conversationally, searching for the fear that had suddenly fled from me.

He rolled his shoulders back, half shrugging, half stretching. "Why _wouldn't_ I? Deserters get shot. And _Harley_ —oh, she'd be one _hell_ of a deserter. Oh, I _know_ how you feel about _killing,_ " he drawled indifferently. "If it makes you feel any better, _she'd_ probably try to do the same to _me._ "

_Fear, where are you? Your boyfriend just said he'd kill you if you ever leave him. That's usually your cue to call the police and get a useless restraining order._

But no. No fear. Calm in its place—serenity, acceptance but not resignation. These were terms I found fully satisfactory. Why? Because I had no intention whatsoever of leaving him. Oh, for a few days, maybe, a few _weeks,_ even, when I was absolutely _sick_ of his brutal behavior—but never for good, and I thought he could tell the difference.

"She loves you," I asserted, nearly forgetting the little game I was playing.

He laughed then, shrill and high and ragged, teeth bared and eyes closing amidst a mass of gleeful creases. "What?" I asked, getting angry at the reaction. "She _does._ " At that moment, I needed him to believe that. Hell, I tried to _show_ him every single _day_. Maybe hearing it from _Batman_ would change his mind. He did seem to revere the vigilante as almost a deity, albeit a deity that he wanted to torture and break and quite possibly eventually kill, if he ever decided to retire one day.

"Oh, _love,_ " he said cheerfully. "Ya know, I think it's chaos's _greatest_ creation. Absolutely _no_ sense to it, none at all, defies our most _basic,_ er, _programming._ You ever loosen up enough to _love_ someone, Bats?" Every time he said the word, it was fairly dripping with scorn—the idea inspired distaste in him, I got that. Didn't change facts.

I ignored the question. "If she doesn't love you, then why does she put up with it all?" I demanded.

" _Ohh_ ," he groaned, and with a quick, jerky series of moves, he threw himself onto the bed— _finally_ —and laid his cuffed hand flat for the first time in hours, hissing and working the fingers as the blood rushed to the neglected area. "Well. _That's_ an interesting question with a _boring_ answer."

I waited for his response, aware that my hands were shaking slightly. _Welcome back, fear._

He tightened his fingers into a fist. "Harley _Quinn_ is a scared little girl, Bats. She's been a scared little girl… for her _whole_ life. But she's got a _spark_ in her—she's got a _craving_ that she can't satisfy on her own. If you look around her, look at the company she kept before _me_ … you'll see _smart_ people. _Forceful_ people, _charismatic_ people—not a whole lot of Mr. and Mrs. Does. No, no no—Harley latches onto people she finds incredible. They whip that spark up into a nice, big ol' _flame,_ and she _needs_ that. Without them, she's just plainclothes, glasses-on Harleen, would-be _gymnast,_ boring _therapist_ —no blood, no guts, and _definitely_ no glory."

A chill shot down my spine, lifting goosebumps to the surface of my skin. His words stung, in large part because—as much as I hated to admit it—they were true. Without the Jonathans, the Pams, the Js of the world, I tended to settle onto a nice little beaten-out path.

"And _me_ ," he continued, watching the ceiling with heavy eyes, "well. Kinda hard to be modest here, big guy. I'm the… uh, the cream of that specific _crop._ She's never gonna meet someone _more_ than me." He left the 'more' undressed. He didn't have to qualify it; I knew exactly what he meant and knew the truth in the statement. "She's obsessed. Obsession isn't _love_ , and it _certainly_ has an expiration date _._ "

"I disagree with that," I said quietly. To my astonishment, I found that I had to fight my throat to get the words out, and there were tears pooling in the corners of my eyes. _Get a grip,_ I told myself forcefully.

"Oh, do you," he muttered, not asking a question. "Then let me put it in terms _you_ might understand. You ever _seen_ the girl?"

"Yes."

"Cute as… as a _button._ Perfect shiny hair, perfect shiny smile, big blue eyes, perfect _size_ —hell, the girl's perfect down to her _shiny little fingernails._ " I looked self-consciously at my nails, clipped a bit short so that I could do the work I was called on to do, but French manicured, glossy at the bases.

He sat up suddenly, making me jump slightly back, but he just loomed there, deadpan. "Now look at _me._ "

As I realized where he was going with this, my heart hurt.

"I'm a freeeeaaaak." He'd never cared for the word and basically lost his shit when he heard it from others, but he drew it out emphatically now. There was absolutely no self-pity and no self-loathing in his tone; he wasn't agonizing about the drastic difference in our appearances. Rather, he was glorying in it. The stabbing pain in my heart receded slightly. It still hurt that he thought that looks had anything to do with it, but knowing that he didn't resent me for it…

 _Well, of course he doesn't resent you,_ I scolded myself sharply. _He doesn't give a shit about that. He's just looking at the evidence. Cold, clinical evidence._

" _Look,_ " he commanded. "Scars and all. Paint. Matted _green_ hair, and half the time I'm carrying _nitroglycerine_ home to her on my hands. Now, really. Looking at us, would you really say we have a chance? Honest opinion here, Bats. Give it to me _straight_."

"I think she likes the way you look," I said emphatically. And I did. Yes, sometimes on a whim I'd try to imagine him pre-scars, pre-dye, pre-purple, just _pre_ —but I always found that I preferred what I had to the stunning man my imagination would come up with. I saw glimpses of that man in J anyway—this way I had it all. "Maybe she's not as shallow as you think."

He drew a wincing breath in through his teeth. "Well, it's not really about _her._ World's rules, you know. Pretty li'l blonde thing like her doesn't belong anywhere near someone so _bone ugly,_ and the rest of the world knows it. I dunno how it'll happen—uh, a pretty-boy hostage… a ruggedly handsome henchman, maybe—but the world will make her see. Aaaaaaand…" He clicked his tongue, indicating his certainty in the prediction.

Beneath the surface, I seethed. _He is not ugly_ , I thought fiercely. _He's not. He's_ _ **not.**_ I couldn't tell him that, though. Not right now.

I held it down and found another outlet. "Well, isn't your job to break the world's rules? Why not _that_ one?"

"Er, _that_ one, it… requires two people's cooperation, open dedication, et cetera, et cetera… and you know as well as I do, big guy—you gotta do _every-_ thing yourself."

This declaration didn't hurt. I knew this full well already—me and the henchmen notwithstanding, J was a firm believer in the adage "You want something done right, do it yourself." His independence was a force to be reckoned with, and I'd learned not to trifle with it.

"Do you think you'll ever trust her to really help you?" The question was resigned. I sensed the answer already.

J, as always, surprised me. "I… I dunno, maybe," he said rapidly, dismissively. "Can't say. All unclear." He groaned, settling himself more comfortably on the bed. "Ooooh, wow. These drugs are—ooh, they're _really_ kickin' in. How much time do you figure we've got left before I'm out?"

 _Weirdo_ , I thought, not without affection. There was absolutely nothing in that ibuprofen that would make him woozy; if he was feeling tired, it was all him—and it was hardly surprising, considering his attempt to marathon it these past few days. He needed all the rest he could get.

I couldn't resist one more question, though, try as I might—in truth, I didn't even _want_ to ask it, knew that I didn't want to _know_ the answer, know it for _sure._ Still, I couldn't prevent it from emerging from slightly shaking lips: "Do you love her?"

And _that,_ it seemed, was the million-dollar question. J went stiff, opened hazy eyes and stared at the ceiling, dark irises rolling rapidly from one side to the other. He hissed, and quietly, he asked, "Why? Are you… _jealous?_ "

"No," I said, keeping calm control of my tone. "Just curious."

That seemed to trigger him, though, and the boldness of the question combined with the exhaustion he was clearly feeling ensured that I was shit out of luck. He simply chuckled softly at one of his many private jokes and fell silent. When I got up to check on him again, he had fallen asleep. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought that the heat on his skin had receded just a bit.

I sighed, rearranged his arms so he wasn't cutting off his blood flow, and then retreated to the desk once more to collect my thoughts and decide how to feel about it all.

 _What the hell was that?_ I thought, slightly stunned by the amount of open information—about _me,_ no less—that I had just received. It was unprecedented—J scorned the idea of talking about 'us.' Sure, he wasn't shy with his opinions about me, about the way we worked, but… the Joker talking to _me_ about me was different than him talking to _Batman_ about me. He played games with me, had motives—not that he didn't do the same with our droll Caped Crusader, but the Joker was unswervingly honest with Batman. I couldn't be sure of the same on my part.

I'd gotten way more than I'd hoped for, and that in itself confused me. A simple hallucination lasting that long? It made no sense, not with the Joker interacting calmly with me and carrying the belief that I was Batman despite lots and _lots_ of physical evidence to the contrary. To the best of my imagination, it had been an extended fever dream of sorts, or maybe a materialization of the shadows always at the edges of his mind, his usual ability to distinguish between fiction and reality weakened due to the sickness.

Or maybe he was exactly a hundred percent aware of what was going on and was playing me. I could see that. Mind games were his forte, after all; I couldn't dismiss any realistic possibilities. Somehow, I doubted it. Logically, the only reason to pull that charade would be to express his concerns without looking like he was expressing his concerns, and that sort of sidestepping the issue would be completely against his character. He enjoyed plowing straight through territory that most people considered sensitive. Shying away here would make no sense.

Now, as for what he'd told actually me…

Operating under the assumption that he'd been telling the truth, there were both good and bad things to be extracted from the discourse I'd surreptitiously shared with him, of course—heaven forbid he _ever_ be simple or easy.

Good first—he believed I was _getting_ somewhere, _really_ thought so, which was _extremely_ encouraging. It meant I wasn't just deluding myself. Obviously I couldn't ever compare to him—he made villainy into a high art, an exquisite work that we humble humans couldn't ever dream of touching. I hadn't entered the game to compete with him, though, so this didn't disturb me. The fact that he thought I could be helpful was thrilling.

And now for the bad. The Joker thought—had convinced himself that he _knew_ —that this was just a phase. In his eyes, I was just going through a more extreme version of the college-lesbian/bisexual stage, only instead of having sex with girls, I was helping him blow up cars and steal stuff.

_Every girl has it, right?_

This would be fine, except inevitably, he believed that I would someday grow out of it. _Whoops, sorry J, I thought it would be okay but I'm really not/that's a little too much blood for me/I'm just gonna run away with this hunky clown you just recruited/kids die when you throw them out of moving buses? I didn't realize that; I'm out now._

Please.

I sighed. I was just realizing once again what I already knew deep-down—that there were no freebies with J, that I was going to have to prove myself over and over until I'd clawed my way up from the starting point. I didn't know how long I was going to have to work to prove to him that I had no intention of leaving him, not now and not ever. If I said I wasn't frustrated that I'd made so little progress in nearly six months, I'd be lying, but hell, I was used to playing by his rules by now. If his rules said he had to hold me at emotional arm's length for an undetermined amount of time due to his certainty that I'd leave, then I'd find some way to be okay with that.

I would be more discouraged if I didn't know how incredible it was that I'd already gotten _this_ close. With or without his ultimate trust, I believed I was the nearest and dearest to the Joker, inasmuch as _anyone_ could be near _or_ dear to him. Almost everyone was expendable to him—hostages, henchmen, police, average everyday Gotham folks…

Not me—at least, not nearly as much as they were. He might not actively shield me from harm, but he'd been known to pull me out of its way every now and again. He let me in his private space, he often shared thoughts and plans, almost absent-mindedly, undercutting the significance of this activity—henchmen often didn't know what he was doing to the day _of,_ and certainly weren't privy to the rough draft version.

In fact, the only one who I could really view as a rival for J's attention was, of course, Batman. Batman, who consumed the Joker's waking thoughts, who yielded such rich opportunity for torment and destruction. Of course J loved to torture and torment on his own, but with Batman… ohh, with Batman, he had a _nemesis._ He had someone entirely capable of fighting back, a pinpointed center of the city to target.

In a lot of ways, I think he trusted Batman to be what _he_ was more than he trusted me to be what _I_ was. And again, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little stir of jealousy at that, but it was accompanied by a feeling of resignation. After all, Batman had been protecting this city for a couple of years now and he'd never showed as much as a chink in the armor. He'd risked his own life to avoid killing the Joker, I'd been told late one night as he shaved, talking carelessly around the straight razor, and for this reason I both appreciated Batman and loathed him. He was stoic, unchangeable, and for this reason he would fascinate the Joker till the end of time—or until he cracked, whichever came first.

 _Hey, though,_ I tried to bolster myself. _If you didn't have any sort of rivalry, it would get boring, and you know how much you hate boredom._

I realized that I had crossed my arms over my chest, that my jaw was jutting out sullenly in response to my train of thought, and I quickly pulled the sulk back, even though J wasn't conscious to see it. _Snap out of it,_ I told myself sternly. _You've got too much to focus on to give undue credence to your insecurities._

I shoved the thoughts to the back of my mind and refocused my thoughts on the task at hand.

* * *

The Joker slept like a stone. He didn't even stir the two times I hauled his head up so that I could force some water down his throat, swallowing automatically without as much as a token resistance, and I took the opportunity to feed him some more ibuprofen. I worried for a while that when he finally awoke, he'd still be stuck in the midst of his delusions, but that fear slowly receded along with his fever—I checked every four hours or so and was pleased to note that as far as I could tell, it was slowly, slowly going down.

After the first twelve hours, I determined to release him the moment he was conscious again, but he continued to sleep. Before my very eyes, I saw evidence of the healing power of this rest, acting more quickly than I would have thought possible—the cold sweats disappeared completely and his breathing leveled out and came easier, free of the labored, wet sounds his lungs had been producing over the past few days. The deep illness-pained furrows smoothed out of his face, the rapid twitching of his eyes behind their lids watching fever dreams slowed and left him looking almost peaceful—almost. "Peace" and "the Joker" weren't exactly terms that went very well together.

Finally, after a full twenty-four hours of sleep, twenty-four hours which I spent alternatively keeping an eye on him, helping where I could, and taking hour naps here and there, he shifted.

I glanced up hopefully. His eyes didn't immediately open; he brought his free hand to his forehead and groaned loudly before the lids twitched and swept up. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, his eyes flicked back and forth, then he turned his head—right, then left, checking out his surroundings with the full appearance of calm and awareness. He rolled his eyes over to me, and, turning on his side lazily, making no move to sit up, he drawled, "Don't tell me ya got someone to _help_ you move me up here."

I released a relieved breath that I hadn't been aware I was holding and got up from the desk chair. _He doesn't remember._ "No," I answered conversationally, reaching for the matchbox. I dumped all the contents on the desk and sifted through the pile of matches until I found the tiny silver key amidst them. " _That_ you did yourself."

I spotted the brief light of mild surprise in his eye before it disappeared. He rested back on the bed, affecting disinterest as I rounded the desk and went over to him. "What's the date?"

"It's the twentieth. You slept for a full day," I said, approaching the bed.

He raised himself up on one elbow, turning his paint-mottled face up to me in response in response to my new proximity, a look of near-defiance on his face—I think I surprised him, coming close like that. The starting words of some sharp, well-aimed comment were on his lips, but I was in no mood to bandy words with him after the trying hours we'd just been through. I sank down on one knee on the mattress, gripped his face firmly between my hands, and kissed him.

I got the distinct impression, judging from his complete lack of reaction, that I had taken him by surprise. Likely he'd expected cringing apologies, thought that I'd just toss him the keys and then flee while he was busy securing his freedom. I didn't think so. Oh, I would ditch this place for a little while, of that I was sure (he was bound to have come up with numerous revenge plots during his unwilling confinement, and I wasn't exactly interested in sticking around to watch him enact them), but I figured his first priority would be getting back into the swing of things, so I had at least a few hours before I started to see his cruelty in full force. Before I left, I wanted to make sure he knew that I felt the same as always about him.

I took thorough advantage of his surprise, deepening and lengthening the kiss until his brain caught up to his body and he wound his fingers into my hair at the left, fisting his hand and pulling my face back from his.

"Hmmm," he rumbled thoughtfully and suspiciously, looking me in the eyes. "Trying to… _butter me up?_ " He liberated one thumb from the handful of hair, reaching over and stroking the bruised and battered flesh at the side of my face, a bit too harshly for it to qualify as a caress. I winced at the roughness and the resulting twinges of pain but didn't try to pull away, instead glancing down at his imprisoned hand and fitting the key into the cuffs.

"Uh-uh," I said in denial. "I just wanted to do that before I did _this._ " With a twist of the key, the cuff came loose, and I pulled it off of J's silver wrist an air of almost defiant finality. With his liberation complete, I looked into his eyes, silently asking for a reaction.

His grip on my hair loosened but didn't release. He glanced down at his suddenly-freed hand, flexed the fingers experimentally, then reached up with it and grasped my chin. Finger and thumb bit into my cheek below the bone, holding me steady, and I didn't attempt to avert my gaze as he studied my face curiously, looking for an ulterior motive to my apparently unexpected compliance.

"Hmm," he said again, this time with an air of slight bemusement, but shrugged it off for the time being, loosening both hands and withdrawing from me. He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back as he rose, on his feet for the first time in many hours but spitefully steady. "Don't go anywhere, _Haaaaarley_ ," he said over his shoulder, then disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

 _Not likely, J,_ I thought wryly, sitting up straight again and staring at the bathroom door as the shower started running. I was definitely going to give him some time to catch up, seethe, and then get too distracted by Gotham's happenings to remember that he was particularly annoyed with me.

 _To Pam's,_ I thought, smirking as I got up to throw a few things into a bag. _And doubtless she'll want to know why I smell so funky._ Somehow, I didn't think my explanation of "I didn't want to take a shower because I was afraid my boyfriend would die while I was in the other room/one of his henchmen would come in and free him while I was busy" would go over too well; I made a mental note to come up with a slightly saner one.

I glanced at the bathroom door one last time before finally leaving the room. _Yes, I'm leaving_ , I admitted to myself.

_But I will definitely be back._


End file.
